Box Box — The development box

Simple, no bullshit development box, ideal for docker based development.

Installation

Install Vagrant and VirtualBox:

$ brew cask install vagrant
$ brew cask install virtualbox

Install vagrant host manager:

vagrant plugin install vagrant-hostmanager

Clone the directory:

git clone https://github.com/renderedtext/boxbox.git ~/boxbox
cd ~/boxbox

Provision your box:

vagrant up

Add an alias an your host machine to .bashrc or .zhsrc:

alias bb="cd ~/boxbox && vagrant up && vagrant ssh -c 'tmux -2'"
alias bhalt="cd ~/boxbox && vagrant halt"

Usage

Start working:

$ bb

Stop working:

$ bhalt

In the machine, try to keep all your projects in one directory like ~/code or ~/workplace. This will allow you to easily upgrade boxbox versions when necessary.

Access your box from the browser:

http://boxbox:<port>

Or, you can do it via the static IP address:

http://10.20.30.40:<port>

If you are running a web application inside of boxbox, make sure to attach to the 0.0.0.0 network interface. This will allow it to be visible from your host. For Rails, this can be achieved with:

bundle exec rails -b 0.0.0.0

Change the timezone

Default timezone is set to Belgrade (UTC+01:00)

To change this, first remove localtime symlink in /etc with:

sudo rm -rf /etc/localtime

Then set timezone to your timezone (e.g. US/Alaska):

sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/US/Alaska /etc/localtime

How to rebuild your boxbox without loosing your projects?

Assuming that you keep your projects in the ~/code directory, you need to:

In the boxbox machine:

# move your projects to the host machine
cp ~/code /vagrant/code

On the host machine:

# destroy the vagrant image
vagrant destroy

# rebuild your vagrant image
vagrant up

In the newly created image, copy your projects back to their original place:

cp /vagrant/code ~/code

Everything should work.

What should be included in the boxbox?

BoxBox aims to remain simple and clean. When adding new packages always check if the new package has a wide use case, useful for many projects. Please avoid optimization for one project only.

Rules of thumb:

• ✅ We should install languages, databases, and background services for communication in boxbox directly. These are widely used, very generic tools.

• ✅ Common linux utilies like wget, curl, htop, ncdu, aws-cli, vim, zsh should also be installed in the boxbox. They have a wide use-case, necessary in every project.

• ❌ Gem dependancies like libicu should be managed on per-repository basis.

• ❌ cmake is in the gray area. It is a widely used tool, but we use it only for one project. It can be installed globally, or per-repo. In this case, we should be conservative and only install it globally if more than one project requires it.

License

The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2017 RenderedText

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.